New technologies challenge the future of taxonomy in Orthoptera

CIGLIANO, M.M.; EADES, D.

JOURNAL OF ORTHOPTERA RESEARCH

The Orthopterists´ Society

Año: 2010 vol. 19 p. 15 - 18

1082-6467

A global imperative for the conservation of biodiversity brings into focus the need for taxonomic research. However, this biodiversity crisis is reflected in a parallel taxonomic crisis. Whereas molecular information increasingly effects the evidential basis for delimiting species (and is likely to result in increasing scientific debate and controversy), revisionary taxonomy is frequently dismissed as merely ´descriptive´, lacking a hypothesis-driven nature. Phylogenetic classifications are optimal for storing and predicting information, but phylogeny divorced from taxonomy is unrealizable. Taxonomy, systematics, and phylogeny are interwoven, hypothesis-driven sciences with a shared theoretical base. Taxonomic knowledge remains essential to biological research and its acquisition is made urgent by the biodiversity crisis. Taxonomy needs to prepare to take advantage of new information technology capabilities. The rapid advances in bioinformatics have provided unprecedented opportunities to conduct taxonomic research more efficiently; cybertaxonomy is emerging as an exciting new branch. Here we argue the great potential for using the Orthoptera Species File online (http://orthoptera.speciesfile.org/) as a tool for monograph and revisionary studies of Orthoptera and we also draw attention to a method of integrating many of the most recent cybertaxonomic tools with species descriptions: this to engage both the specialist taxonomic community and a wider public in the gathering and deepening understanding of taxonomic knowledge